Friday, December 28, 2007

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. It is always so much fun to be with our family!!!

We have a fantastic system set up for how we manage family... Christmas Eve with mine, and Christmas day with Wes'.

At the Todd house we always do a pinata. The little kids get a plastic bat and they just go at it, no blind fold... nothing. Its so sweet to watch them because they have a hard time even connecting, except for little Alfie, my cousin's son. Next, the adults have a go. This year we did it a little differently. In the past we have set the pinata up in the back yard. And, instead of hitting it with a bat, we threw a BBQ scrapper at it... kinda like a hatchet. Last year someone broke it... I think it was my husband. So this year we did it the old fashioned way, blindfolded and with a bat. 3 swings each. However, before the men had their turn my mom busted it open and we had a free for all! After the pinata we munched on lots and lots of snackies... then had a yummy ham dinner. We also did a white elephant exchange, which was a lot of fun. We also did a gift exchange with the kids. This year we decided to make each of the siblings something. Sarah (and Danny) made us these great recipe books, and it was also good for genealogy as she included a nice family tree in the beginning, some great older pictures and a little background as to where the recipe came from. Heidi and Ned gave everyone a "thought box". The purpose of the box is to leave it out and each couple is supposed to write little notes in it. She also did a fun painting activity. She bought each family an ornament from Michael's and we got to paint our own and bring it home. Hayley (and Adam) made us a beautiful "Be..." tile to put up in the house. It has President Hinckley's 6 "Be's" on it. I love it, and have been wanting something like it to put up in the house. Wes and I made a little calendar video with photos on a DVD. It shows everything we did in the year 2007. Unfortunately my computer is stupid and I cannot put it on the DVDs yet, so we just showed everyone at the house. We also did my favorite tradition, which is getting big pieces of construction paper and drawing all over it. Then you hang it up at the house... and in the morning you bust through it and see all the present. (See Danny's video on his blog for Carter's demonstration :) It was such a fun night, and we got our Disneyland passes again, which makes for a super fun year.

Ella...

Carter...

Ryan...

Alfie and Alaina...

me :)...

The chilin'...At the Aleman house we also had a lot of good food, Sandie is one of the best cooks I have ever met. Unfortunately, Christmas started a little later than usual, because we had to pick Grandma Jean up from the hospital. Sunday night, she hadn't been feeling well. As she was walking down the hall she passed out and landed in the bathroom. On her way down she feel and hit the counter and side of the toilet. This caused her to cut her head open in the back making her get 5 stitches. She also tore her hand from the knuckles to the wrist and is just bandaged up all over. We are so lucky she is okay and was able to join us for Christmas. After Fred and Grandma got back we were able to start opening presents. Wes' family are each so generous. Jaime and Matt got us mini-blinds for our bedroom... I don't know why they thought we needed those :). Patrick got us a gift card to Albertson's... again, who needs food? Shaun gave us a visa card for free spending. Grandma gave us an account of some stories of her life made into a little book, and Ashleigh got us stuff from Hawaii... Maui to be exact where she has been living the past few months. Robb and Rhonda also sent us a fun little Christmas story book they made from Texas. Fred and Sandie hooked us up...giving us Home Depot gift cards, a CPK gift card, movie tickets, and lots of fun stuff. We also had a little sibling competition for a mystery gift, which Patrick won. It was a DVD box set of Planet Earth... which if you haven't seen I highly recommend! We also had Wes' cousins the Watsons join us for delicious home made Mexican food, and some more of Sandie's fun games outside. Our families are both so much fun! I am so lucky to have married into such a "cool" fam.

Brinley and Tyler...

Patrick, Matt, Jaime, Brinley, Sandie...Ashleigh's hawaiian gifts...

I am also grateful to have such a wonderful husband who treats me so well and made this Christmas so wonderful. This season was such a new experience for us both... with not a lot of means we were able to focus on the true spirit of Christmas... Christ. It made everything more meaningful and allowed us to see things in a new light.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

I just started this blog, and have never done one before, so be patient with me in the beginning! I wanted to start a blog so I actually write down events of our lives, as this is the closest I will ever get to keeping a journal, I hope whoever reads this will enjoy.

As an introduction our names are April and Wes Aleman... as if you couldn't already tell. We were married January 6, 2006 (yes coming up on 2 years). We live in Southern, CA, and we always have so much fun together.

I am happy to report (as we now have a house) we put our Christmas lights up yesterday. It was so much fun to put them on my own house... and I decorated the mantel, and put up our artificial Christmas tree. It's been so much fun getting our house all ready for Christmas! I will put up pictures later!